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Arena - Pepper's Ghost CD (album) cover

PEPPER'S GHOST

Arena

 

Neo-Prog

3.69 | 484 ratings

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Matti
Prog Reviewer
2 stars There seems to be a crowd of pleased fans, so (excuse me my cynicism) Arena must have known exactly how to act in the music biz. "Heavy sells, so let's be heavy. We could make much more sophisticated and progressive music too, but it has a smaller audience. That's settled, guys? OK, here's my idea: we'll make our new album look like a cartoon book, so the kids who spend their week money on Marvels and all that trash will more likely buy it. And the stories? Hell, you know, the usual s**t with sorcery, demons, the gloomy atmosphere of the nightly cobbled streets of the vanished London... Some Wellsian scientific horror... Why not some Western settings too. We could ask the cartoonist make the heroes look like us!"

Well, for starters, I didn't like Contagion, the heavier style Arena were taking, after being more clearly in the melodic Neo Prog category. But if this is now their essence for good, I won't bother the least anymore. Seven utterly naiive heavy rock tracks where only occasionally an acoustic guitar or a melodic keyboard tune raise its head over the thick wall of sound. Even the keyboards are being played in the Prog Metal style, not to mention the monotonously heavy electric guitar. The music could be "well-done" in that particular genre, dunno of that, but not a moment of clean listening pleasure was in sight for ME. "PEPPER's ghost"? Does it refer to the Beatles and Abbey Road studios where this was mastered? "Hulk's Ghost" would have been more appropriate album title.

Matti | 2/5 |

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